Sen. Scott Brown Completes Recovery Act Reversal

March 04, 2010 4:52 pm ET —
Matt Finkelstein

Conservative
attacks on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have quieted down
recently, after a series of reports
indicating that the bill has largely succeeded. Although some Republicans are still claiming
that the recovery effort "failed," there has
been a noticeable shift in their rhetoric.
Instead of arguing that the stimulus "didn't
create any jobs" at all, as they did for most of last year, Republicans are
now focusing their attention on "net
jobs" created.

This rhetorical
shift is embodied by Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), who has routinely railed against
the Recovery Act since his campaign. In
January, Brown declared, "The first stimulus bill didn't work. They haven't created one
new job." A couple weeks later, Brown repeated, "The last stimulus bill didn't create one
new job." But by mid-February, he was hedging. In an appearance on Fox News, Brown clarified his statement that "we haven't created one new job," saying, "The net job growth isn't
where it needs to be."

Today, Brown completed
his shift to the "net jobs" argument.
While speaking on the Senate floor, Brown argued, "The hundreds of
billions of dollars we've spent and continue to spend on the stimulus package
have not created one new net job." Watch:

As we've
previously noted,
the new talking point undermines the GOP's previous stance. By shifting the focus to "net jobs," Republicans
are unequivocally conceding that the Recovery Act did create jobs -- up to 2.4
million, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office -- but
complaining that it didn't create more
jobs than were lost in the recession.
When the bill passed, though, the country was already shedding around
800,000 jobs per month (see chart below).
The trend has been moving in the right direction ever since, and job
losses are nearly flat, but it's entirely
unreasonable to expect "net jobs" to be positive now or any time soon.